The Anouk Dress (or, how I've lost 5 lbs)

I have taken up knitting. Yes, knitting, and I bought the crochet hooks to learn that too. I figure that if I'm going to stay at home with O and A, then I may as well learn how to make things for them! After all, with me not working, we can't afford those same beautiful hand knit items :)

I started knitting at the beginning of January, and my very first attempt was dismal - I started with 15 stitches, and somehow ended up with 22, before finally learning how to stitch them back together. My next attempt was slightly better - only a few holes, and it turned out just the right size for O's baby bunny's blanket. Sweet! I figured I needed more practice. So I started working on a pillow, made with 8 squares of differing colours, all done in garter stitch. That should give me practice! Well, 2 months later, I'm finally close to finishing it. I did start in on another project about 3 weeks ago (the garter stitch got boring, plus I found the CUTEST dress pattern for A, with such soft yarn...) but it's still taking forever. The best part? I've lost 5 lbs just from knitting at night, instead of eating! Woohoo! This is a diet I can deal with.


The dress pattern I found on knitty.com - the Anouk pattern (The Anouk pattern by Kate Gilbert). How hard could it be? It's actually not been that hard, but some of the knitting language is a bit overwhelming. Thank goodness for online video tutorials.

Here's a pic of what the final dress will look like (in different colours)- it's got to be the cutest dress I've seen in a long time. I can't wait to get it finished!

The Cave

As we have more children, and therefore less room, my crafting space has been shuffled around the house - before having O, I had an entire bedroom for my crafts, space to spread out the scrapbooking supplies (and leave them!), space to leave out my sewing machine, no need to worry if everything was put away ... it was wonderful. And did I appreciate all that crafting freedom? NO! My older, wiser self now drools over memories of that time. Now I head downstairs to my nook to try and get something done in the tiny bit of time I can call my own each day. Up until a week ago, I had half of the exercise room, with a storage closet for all my stuff. Apparently, we need that space to exercise. So now my crafting supplies and I share space with all our other storage in the tiny room under the stairs. The bonus? It does have a baby gate. The downside? No flooring, poor lighting and not much space. But it is mine! So far, I've got a large kitchen table, storage cubes on said table, a dresser and a small rolling cart to work with.

The other day I went to the fabric store and met my downfall, the remnant bin. I L-O-V-E remnants. To top it off, they had some nice prints and textures. And I got it all for $12.00! Now, I want to head downstairs and create something for O and A's room. But can I? No. Because after shoving all my crafting stuff into it's new home (which will henceforth be known as "The Cave", since it has no windows and poor light) I did not bother to put anything away, I just crammed and left. So, no new crafting for me tonight! Instead, I'll be organizing, but at least then I'll be able to find my crafting space again!

Confessions of a Cloth Diaper Addict

My name is Sandra, and I am a cloth diaper addict. I have tried almost every style you can find, and then go full circle, as my "preferences" change. Maybe I just like change? Probably. Can I afford to continually buy new cloth diapers in the journey to find that perfect diaper? No. So I started making a few of my own. It wasn't that hard! I ended up creating a few diapers for A for FREE. They are not the cutest ones in my stash, I don't pull them out when I want to show off her cute cloth tushie, but they work great. Oh, and the best part? Did I mention they were free???

But how did I make these for free, you ask? All of my materials were already here (or found), and I found my patterns online, or copied easy ones from diapers already in my stash. So far I have used my old flannel receiving blankets, towels that were ready to be made into rags, and some flannel sheets I got off of freecycle.

My first cloth diaper was a RRP (Rita's Rump Pattern) that was a "one size fits most" diaper. Easy to make, and worked great. We fastened it with a snappi, and threw a cover over it. I changed the diaper itself to be an AI2, since I didn't want to try and fuss around with making a pocket. I think it turned out pretty well. The diaper itself is made of reclaimed flannel, and the doubler is made of flannel sandwiched around toweling.





But then I found that my little chunk didn't fit those so well once she reached 20 lbs, so they ended up shipped off to a friend who could use them, and back to my normal stash I went.

But now, as A reaches close to 23 lbs, I'm finding that her medium fitteds are not fitting so great anymore. So I went back to looking at what I could do, and decided to use the old style EWies Flatz as a model for some flat diapers made out of receiving blankets. I whipped up a few for my friend, but altered it to that it was half the thickness. It ends up requiring an extra fold down the middle (rather than just a fold at the top for sizing) but they are very quick drying and super cute!

Here's a pic of the receiving blanket diaper:


With the extra doubler laid in:


And folded in half, to lay into a diaper cover (this is how A will use them, at 16 months old):


But for those smaller than A, the top folds down, each fold ~1 inch - so a small baby (under 12 lbs) would most likely have it folded like this:


Now to go and make some for A! I've got the how to myself for another hour, and the kids are in bed, so it's (so far, knock on wood) quiet! Time to convince myself that since I can make these for free, I really DON'T need to go and buy those super cute diapers that are out there.